


Peach and Poppy

by boogiewrites



Category: Frontier (TV 2016)
Genre: 1970s, Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Declan Harp - Freeform, Declan Harp AU, Descent into Madness, Doctor - Freeform, Eventual Smut, F/M, Frontier AU, Graphic Description, Graphic Violence, Murder, Murder Babies, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Romance, Slow Burn, couples who kill together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:55:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26870032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boogiewrites/pseuds/boogiewrites
Summary: Declan Harp AU. Set in the 1970′s, Declan is a misbehaving psychiatric patient and Dr. Dixon, or Dixie as he likes to call her, is the tenacious and underestimated new hospital director. Will this new job get the best of her delicate sensibilities like people are warning her? Will the charm of one of her patient’s awaken something in her she can’t come back from?
Relationships: Declan Harp/Original Female Character(s), Declan Harp/Other(s), Declan Harp/Reader, Declan Harp/You
Kudos: 1





	Peach and Poppy

1975 was an exciting year for psychiatry and it was shaping up to be one for Scarlett. She sat in the driver's seat, something she’d had to work so hard to accomplish. Her father had insisted with her new position of such importance it would look proper to be driven around again. But she’d only been living on her own for a few years now and she wasn’t ready to give up that freedom again.

She supposed he truly had a soft spot for her because he hadn't been entirely dismissive of this rebelliousness. But he always gave in to her in the end.

“Those feminists out there in… heathen California and such. Dixie darlin, I brought you up to be a respected little lady. You’re a dang doctor! Miss Georgia! You’re smart and gorgeous as the day is long honey, why would you wanna go and act ugly like that?”

This always came with the intimidating insinuation that it would sure be a shame if her actions were what lost him the next election.

With a wide-eyed, “It won’t be a problem, daddy.” He’d give her a hug and lift up her chin, tell her she looked like her mama and she’d be proud.

If he’d wanted a daughter to fall for that maybe he shouldn’t have let her become a psychiatrist.

But Scarlet or Dixie as those close to her called her, her daddy had been right about one thing, she was smart. She’d learned how to play the game in her favor long ago. In a public and pressured life like hers, looking how she did, she learned early what was expected of her and how men were going to treat her. She was allowed a bit of protection. Her father wasn’t just some kiss ass politician. He’d been known to make a few people disappear, and the whiff of a threat always around him, so his daughter would understandably come with some consequences. But now she’d become her own person, a doctor, and had a house and life of her own that she was still having fun exploring.

She was an accomplished psychiatrist. Engaged to one of her daddy’s lawyers and now the head chief of a psychiatric hospital. Which was where she was headed right now in the new car her daddy had bought her. A slick thing that made her feel confident and a bit bad if she were being honest. This is not a feeling she was accustomed to, and on this morning drive out of the city into rural Georgia for her first day on the job, she was feeling a lot of things she never had before.

It wasn’t a dream job by any stretch. This was going to be work. But with so many specialty fellowships, she felt like she had what it took to turn the place around.

When she pulled into the parking lot it was clear the job was bigger than anticipated. She stood outside her car with a bag stuffed full of files and looked up at the daunting hospital. It’d been around much longer than she had. Served as a sanitarium during the TB outbreaks, now showing its age and functions as Sunny Valley Psychiatric Hospital. Much preferred to the dated terminology of lunatic asylum it had formerly held. The old chief had been there for over 30 years. A lot had changed outside of Sunny Valley but the inside hadn't. She was going to have to gut and rebuild this place from the ground up, she thought as she took a deep breath and made her way in.

———-

The murmurs started long before she’d stepped foot into the hospital. She hadn’t expected a warm welcome, it’d been a stressful time for everyone with a regime change, but the doctors, some older than her father, and all men weren’t going to be an easy sell on her as their new boss.

She understood from a statistical standpoint. She hadn’t been practicing for that many years. But in that time she had been published and was known for her unique approach to care. Her father had also donated a large sum of money to the state's Psychiatric Association. Which certainly didn’t hurt her chances.  
—————

So she came in with a positive, self-assured attitude. She had a game plan and now the hard work began. She meets with the doctors on staff with bold new orders. She would meet with each individual to go over the patient and their care plan. She would lay out new directives and goals, telling them she was bringing them into a new age of medicine where new research and medicine are all utilized with psychotherapy, medication, and the arts. It went over about as well as she expected. At least she was prepared for every rebuttal and excuse as she was an avid reader of medical journals. She’d infuriated a handful who resigned, but she preferred to bring in new life anyway.

She met with every employee, from groundskeepers and kitchen to housekeeping. She gave them her plans for updates and explained she was going to start looking for funding immediately and to expect changes and upgrades. Most of the staff liked her new hands-on approach, not the idea of more work but instead the idea of someone who would listen to them being in charge.

She spent days buried in files with arguments on treatment and headaches. The lingering stench of cigar smoke still hung in her office no matter how widely she opened the windows. She’d laid the base for her work, now it was time to move onto the most important part, the patients themselves.

————————-

It was Friday and the exhausting week was nowhere near finished. However, she thought she’d been able to check off a huge phase of her plan, a satisfying thick line through it on her goal list.

“There is actually one other patient that we uh… forgot.” A male nurse says as he hangs in her doorway.

“Forgot?” She says with the tone of a scolding mother.  
“How do you FORGET a patient?”

“He’s been in isolation and we don’t go down there much so the night crew didn’t tell us he was still down there.”

She wanted to bang her head into the desk. She thought she’d processed how poorly they were treating people but they kept on surprising her.

“This...this will not happen again. We don’t lose track of patients...of PEOPLE. We are not that sort of establishment now. I want a new record-keeping system for this sort of thing. Have it to me by the end of next week.”

“Yes ma’am." The frustrated younger man said.

“It’s Doctor Dixon. Now show me to him.” She shoos him out of the doorway.

Not even the golden hour light could salvage the depressing aesthetic of the hospital. Peeling paint and chipped tiles she had to skip over with her heels were everywhere she went. She pulled her white lab coat over her matching suit set as they made their way into an even more dreary sort of hallway. Some doors weren’t even on the hinges and inside were torn padded cells in a neglected wing of the building.

“I’d expect to find something like this in the old abandoned B building but not here. You still keep people in these things?” She says with a heavy sigh of frustration.

“Just this one. And we don’t have to use it often. Well. Just for him.” She shrugs as he finds his key.

“Who is him?”

“Harp. He’s… difficult.”

“How so?”

“Prone to violent outbursts, sleeping with other patients… staff.”

Scarlet lets out a scoff. “And he should be forgotten in a dark tiny room for that?”

“Uhh.. it’s… where we put him when he won’t listen.”

“Just… open it? Okay. I’ll deal with you and this… horrid treatment plan you have allowed here later."

“You sure you don’t want me to get someone else to help, he mi-“

“Open the damn door.” She ordered more sternly, whatever it is I can handle it.” she insisted loudly and with a glare.

For a few heavy moments, nothing happens, just an open door into a very dark room that the light doesn’t reach. The white noise of the bodies inside the building beyond the wing’s heavy double doors was slight, just a steady beat of her pulse in her ears as her eyes tried to focus. The nurse stands in a defensive body position as Scarlet peers into the room taking tentative steps forward.

She waits and then hears movement. The aid moves into the room and she follows behind, seeing how this is going to go.

“C’mon Harp.” He grunts and uses his foot to roll the man onto his front.

“Did you just…” the face of the aid turns fast to a very angry face staring daggers into him. “...kick him?”

“No ma’am I was just rolling him so he could get up easier.”

She hears a muffled grunt from the man on the floor who’s slowly moving.

“Shut up.” The aid mutters down.

Dixie takes a deep breath to compose herself. “Go to your supervisor's office and wait for me.” She states coldly.

“Ma’am I-“

“I don’t care what you have to say anymore alright? Every time I’ve given you a chance you have only continuously failed so you’re fired. Go tell HR, and send one of the female nurses this way, please.”

She gets the death stare she’d seen a million times before when correcting and enacting her authority to a man. “Yes ma’am.” He grits through his teeth.

As she hears his footsteps down the hall she begins to kneel next to this unfortunate man. “I would like to apologize for this treatment, Mister Harp.”

She sees his face, a beard just started to fill out and as unkempt as his shirt and greasy hair. It laid in the way his sleeping had moved it, he had crusts on his face and his eyes were squeezed shut from the light. She helps him sit up, being gentle but having to exert to help the large man. She let his eyes adjust and when he finally opened them to look at her his face contorted into a very confused expression.

“I’m Doctor Dixon. The previous Chief passed away and I’m his replacement. I’ll be taking care of the hospital now. And I would like to personally apologize for the mistreatment you’ve been given here previously. This is archaic and holds no scientific grounds to help patients based on formal studies.”

He really only heard a few of her rushed words. She’d lost him towards the end there but whatever she said it had sounded nice. His ears worked better than his eyes at the moment and the almost husky, thick, and sweet feminine Georgia accent rolling out of her painted mouth like sweat dripping down a glass was making him melt too.

“So the old guy finally bit it?” He croaks out after clearing his throat.

“Yes. Heart attack they said.”

“Mmmph.” Was his emotionless reply. From how he’s been treated she didn’t blame him for not being upset. So far no one had really acted upset about the news. It was very telling.

“Who are you?” He focuses his eyes on her.

“Doctor Dixon. I’m here to replace the Chief that just died.”

“Ah.” He nods and then winces.

“Would you mind if we got you out of here and cleaned up? We could speak over a good meal, I'd love to hear what you have to say about the previous administration. I want to help.”

As another nurse swept in, a broad farmer's daughter, helped her loosen the jacket and get him to the washroom. “You want to… know what I think?” He lets out a hoarse chuckle.

“Of course. You’re a part of this hospital and if I’m running it I want to know everything. Good and the bad.”

He nods and focuses on using his legs, the journey to the bath hadn’t felt this long in a while. “You take your time, schedule him down for some Physical Therapy tomorrow please. I’ll go make sure your room is ready.” She says reassuringly. He sees her disappear into the fuzz of the distance, his injection still making him groggy.  
——————  
He’d slicked back his wild and uneven hair with water and was currently hunched over his desk in his room being allowed to eat in peace. It was nice.

“Hello? Mr. Harp?” A slightly familiar voice from his doorway says. A little redhead with a daughter of a dentist smile and perfectly coiffed big hair came and sat in the seat next to his desk. “I managed to grab an extra pudding. You want it?” She sits it on his desk as she has a seat.

It’d been a while since he’d seen anyone new and she was bright and shiny and there was plenty to look at. He looks her over and then to the cup. “A bribe?”

“No. I thought for all the hell the former establishment put you through that at the moment an extra pudding cup is the least I could do.” She gives a real smile and a huff of a laugh. Been a long time since someone had interacted with him like he wasn’t in a psychiatric ward.

“Hmmph.” He grunts and accepts the offer.

“I did want to hear about your treatment here. As I said. I want this hospital to be a place where people can receive the help and support they need to achieve their goals. I’m not here to be a warden. I’m here to be a doctor. I took an oath to help others and I seem to be one of the few around that took that seriously.” She huffs.

“You don’t act like a doctor.”

“I’m a horse of a different color I presume.”

He nods in acknowledgment and continues eating.

“I wanted to know the good and bad of the hospital previously. Because I want to fix things. The men responsible for putting you in that cell have all been fired I'd like you to know.”

“Really...taking charge of the place aren’t ya?”

“I’m being met with much resistance.” She admits with a smile.

“Let me add to it then. I have conditions.”

“Conditions? What for?” She leaned closer and he could smell her perfume. It’d been a while since he’d been buried in the neck of a woman that smelled expensive like she did.

“For this information you want.”

“Oh. Well okay. What would you like Mr. Harp?”

“For starters call me Declan.” He waves his hand. “You’re gonna be my doctor right?”

“Yes, I am.”

“So I’ll be having sessions with you now?”

“Correct.”

“We starting tomorrow?”

“If you wish.”

“I do. And I want you to have me something waiting in your office when I come in.”

“What would that be?”

“A cheeseburger.”

“A cheeseburger?” She laughs.

“The biggest you can find from the greasiest place you know of.”

She laughs and nods enthusiastically. “Consider it done.” She says happily.

“Really?”

“Why not?” she shrugs. “Perfectly reasonable request.”

He blinks in surprise at her but with dark narrowed eyes. “I’ll sing like a bird for you after I have that burger then.”

“Consider it a deal.” She holds out her hand to shake on it and the trust she was showing for him not to yank her down and have his way with her was astounding.

“Lookin forward to it, Doc…?” He shakes her hand.

“Dixon.” She adds with no annoyance for repeating it.

“Doctor Dixon. Alright. See you then.”

“Looking forward to it.” She repeats back playfully and he’s left with a visible confused expression on his face for the pleasant interaction he’d just had with someone in charge. He didn’t know if he was happy about or ashamed of himself. But she had certainly caught his interest.

——————————

“Hey, there jailbird.” says the woman in the worn chair. She was sitting incorrectly as always, this time with her legs over the arm of the chair.

“Hey, Alex.” He sighs to his only real friend in the hospital.

“Was this a new record?” She asks, turning her head from the old television in the activity room towards a tired and beaten up looking Declan.

“I don’t know. I was the one in the box I don’t know what day it is.”

“Thursday.”

“Fuck me.”

“Yeah, you really pissed them off last time.” She laughs. “Can’t keep your charm to yourself can you?”

“No ma’am.” He wears a sly grin. “Speaking of have you seen that new doctor?”

“New doctor director.” She corrects with a point of a finger. “Yes, I have.”

“What do you think about her?”

“I like her.”

“Really? You like no one.” He questions her motives.

“I saw her today. She’s...different.”

“Yeah. Different. That’s what I thought.” He hums in thought.

“I’m surprised you haven’t made sweet sweet love to that little peachy assed firecracker.” Alex jokes.

“Oh, it’s been on mind ever since I came to and saw her walk out of my room in that tight little skirt.”

“She is...yeah.” Alex blushes slightly. “But she was actually nice to me. Was strange.”

“Yeah me too. It was...new.” He runs his arm and settles into his chair.

“She wrote down my complaints. Apparently, she has for everyone so far. She called down to the office and fired Jones because I told her what he did to me.”

“Yeah, she fired numb nuts that threw me in.”

“You should play nice with this one. She might be a good one.”

“I wouldn’t bruise that peach.”

“You’ll have to practice your lying. You’ve gotten rusty.” She grins.

“I don’t plan on it. If she comes through with my request I’m gonna tell her about all this bullshit.”

“She even mentioned… getting out.” She adds in a quieter more serious tone and Declan immediately notices and changes his focus.

“What’d she say?” He whispers with great interest.

“Apparently a few years back the...psychiatry people said homosexuality was no longer a mental illness. So she’s going to work to get that removed from my paperwork and we can work on the rest. It’ll “improve my chances of being released tremendously” Alex mocks the doctor's heavy southern drawl.

“Yeah she’s a little belle isn’t she?” He laughs.

“I mean her name is Scarlett for fucks sake. She is a debutante.”

“Well fuck me that’s a sexy name.”

“Don’t I know it. About creamed my cotton panties when she told me. Dr. Scarlett Dixon.” She mocks again.

“I’m gonna make her cream hers.” Declan promises with wiggling eyebrows.

“I’m sure you will stud. But play nice. She could be useful. Plus she has a fiancé. Didn’t you see that big rock on her hand?”

“I didn’t.” He shakes his head. “Never stopped me before.”

“Not much has.”

——————————-

Scarlet got home late, almost nodding off from overwork and the calming quiet of the drive. She yawns and wakes herself up before entering her house she shared with her fiancé currently.

“Hello, Phillip.” She sighs out, seeing him with his glasses on and hunched over his desk in his office by the front door. “Did Wilamena make dinner as I requested?”

“Yeah. It’s...in the fridge.” He doesn’t look up when responding.

“Do you have a minute? I had a big day today.” She says sheepishly.

He looks up and sighs. “What is it?”

“I just wanted to tell you about my day is all. Big changes coming with this job.” She bounces on her feet excitedly.

“You’re working in a nuthouse Dixie how interesting can it be?”

“Very. Actually. And that’s a rather offensive term so please don’t refer to it in that way. Especially at the fundraiser coming up.”

“When was that again?”

“Tuesday.” She sighs. She’d told him so many times and it was so important to her.

“Mmm.” He answers.

“What does Hmm mean?” She asks with her irritation showing.

“I might have something that night.”

“Of course you do.” She mutters and rubs her temple.

“I’m a busy man.” He says lazily but defensively.

“Yeah. And I’m a busy woman and still manage to find time for everything.” She says quietly but sharply.

“Do you want the work I do for your father to suffer? Do you want me to mess up one of his legal proceedings and have him arrested? Because that’s what happens when I don’t work Dixie.”

With her jaw tight she huffs air out of her nose in frustration. “Of course I don’t.” She says bitterly. “I just wish you had time to be my fiancé and not just my father's lawyer. We don’t even… sleep together anymore. You realize it’s been months?”

“Has it?” He asks rhetorically with his eyes back to his desk.

“Yes. I had a good day and thought I could share my successes and you could validate my hard work and I could have some attention from you to celebrate things going well.”

“I need to know these things in advance. I can’t just up and be in a mood to give you attention. I’m-“

“A busy man. I know.” She sighs and lets her hands hit her hips. She went to bed frustrated and alone after eating cold leftovers while standing in her kitchen. Who was she to give people advice anyway? She certainly didn’t have her shit together.


End file.
